It’s always fun to speak with Justified’s (FX, Tuesdays, 10/9C) creator/showrunner, Graham Yost. He’s as candid as anyone constrained by the need to avoid spoilers can be, and he always seems to be enjoying being interviewed.
With the season finale of Justified coming up this week, Yost took some time to talk about the show and how it’s all about family – and to share a few thoughts on the season to date and the decision to wrap everything up with one last season, next year.
Well, first of all, thank you, Graham, and thank you to the moderators for inviting me to this conference call. This is my first one with you guys, so thank you.
Graham Yost: Oh, thank you. One little thing, everyone. I’m on a cordless handset. Sometimes it drops out, so if it just drops out for a second just bear with me.
No problem. Well, something that I think many people seem to be kind of glossing over in the “Starvation” episode is kind of the full gravity of the change we saw in Raylan’s character. I mean, we know he’s willing to get his hands dirty and tends to be just a little trigger happy, but he’s so desperate to get Darryl Crowe, I mean he’s willing to throw Ava under the bus and that adolescent kid. Is this super hardcore Raylan that we’re seeing a temporary thing or has the character truly undergone a pivotal change that we’ll now see throughout the rest of the series?
Graham: You know, it’s interesting that you can see it as the hardcore Raylan who, as Winona called him in the pilot, the angriest man she’s ever known and I think that is part of it. But it’s also Raylan’s struggle because he wants to get Darryl, but he can’t just kill him because then that would doom Kendall to a long stretch in prison.
But it’s also, I think, it’s something that happened in the 11th episode, when after Art was shot and Raylan is talking to Tim Gutterson and Tim is basically saying do you want to go out and just find Daryl and kill him? And Raylan says, “I don’t think that’s what Art would want.”
And so Raylan has the struggle in him of the guy who wants to get revenge and yet can’t because of the kid, but he also wants to try and do things in a way that Art would respect. We’ve always seen Art as his good father and he’s, obviously, incredibly disappointed Art this season in a way that he never has before, so that’s the struggle. Okay?
Okay. So, in a sense he’s not actually going farther, hardcore; he’s actually coming back to being more professional and trying to kind of come back to being a good guy in a sense?
Graham: Well, in a way. And yet, you know, you see what he does in those scenes with Ava and I think it tears him apart. I don’t think he wants to be the guy who says I’ll get the guards to look the other way, but he’s desperate. And I think that it’s more than him being hardcore Raylan as being desperate Raylan. And he is really just trying to figure a way out of this.
And just one other quick question. It seems like most of the members of the cast are being reduced to kind of every man for himself. They’re losing all their allies and all their support systems. Will we kind of see the results of that, of them reaching their breaking points and being on their own in the finale or is that something that’s going to kind of carry through the rest of the series?
Graham: You’ll see a big shift in the finale. You’ll see what happens to the resolve of Ava this season, the resolve of the Crowes and also the Boyd story. And there is a big reset that happens in the finale. But, yes, the whole sort of point of this season was to strip away everyone from everyone so that Ava is alone in prison, Boyd is alone on the outside and Raylan is alone.
And yet with the “Starvation” really the point of it, or one of the points of that episode was that when Boyd confronts, publicly confronts Raylan with the accusation, the truth, that he, Raylan, was implicated or involved in the death of Nicky Augustine at the end of last season. And he says it in front of Rachel and Tim. Rachel and Tim have Raylan’s back.
And so that is sort of the beginning of them coming together and I will say that that is one thing we’re headed towards in the final season.
Okay. Well, I will say I noticed that when he did that, the look on Raylan’s face reminded me of that first church scene when Boyd asked him if he saw his dad’s face when he shot Tommy. It was like uh-oh.
Graham: Yeah, it’s a little bit of okay, now what? And Rachel and Tim backing him up was Raylan’s victory in that episode.
Switching gears for a second here to talk about writers in the industry, if a new screenwriter were to write a great pilot and get themselves in the room with a show runner for, basically, an intro and a meeting or an interview, what kinds of questions should they expect from a show runner?
Graham: Do you have a story? Are you going to pitch it now on the call? I’m just kidding. Listen, this is a very interesting time in the history of television. Never has the marketplace been as big, as fragmented; it allows for shows that are very much of themselves. It’s no longer just the, especially in hour-long, the franchises of police, law and medicine.
And so, I think that what any show runner is looking for, the scenario you’ve set is that happens, but it’s also young writers coming up with an idea and going to a network, going to a studio. And what are people looking for. Well, that changes minute by minute. Maybe they’re not looking for vampires or zombies now, but they’re looking for something and everyone is trying to guess.
But what people are really looking for is a vision, something that has legs, you know, what’s episode 17? And a compelling narrative, why do you want to get into this world and it can be anything now. It’s so broad. The fact that Sam Shaw is doing a show on the Manhattan Project, that’s something that people would have dreamed about 20 years ago and the fact that that can happen now is just wonderful.
How important is having a show reel or footage? Because I hear that in the age of webisodes, building your own audience online or just having something that looks really cool, let’s say you’ve shot the pilot or you’ve shot a couple of scenes, is that important do you think?
Graham: I don’t think it can hurt. Except, and this is not good, I’ve seen some things that people have done, some webisodes, things that essentially turned into a pilot and the financial side of me, the first thing I asked was how much did that cost? How much did you spend? Because that looks fantastic and that is part of the deal, too.
I will say that one of the problems is that if you’re doing those webisode things or trying to do an independent pilot, the big risk is are you going to get acting talent that can deliver? And also, can you make it look good? Can you make it look like a really professionally produced product?
So, those are all things you have to weigh, but that helps. I mean, if you don’t have a track record, if you don’t have a list of credits, showing what you can do, especially if you want to direct it, then that becomes critical.
I was going to ask why are you deciding to end the best show on television next season?
Graham: Listen, I don’t think we are the best show on television, but I think we’re all just incredibly happy to be even thought of in the company of other great shows that are on right now. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we want to end it after six seasons is we want to make sure we don’t overstay our welcome.
We don’t want to run out of story. We don’t want to be treading water. We’ve already done a few things that to our mind are dangerously close to repeating ourselves. And sometimes we’ve repeated ourselves without knowing it. It’s like, wow, in retrospect that seems an awful lot like the one in season two or three or whatever.
So, that’s the big thing is we want to leave the party on a high note.
Okay. And do you have ideas of what you might want to do after Justified?
Graham: I do have ideas. I generally don’t talk about anything until it’s actually shooting. But I have a lot of interests. And, listen, I’ve been an incredibly fortunate writer that I’ve gone from project to project that has interested me and I hope that that just gets to keep going on.
Well, great. I also loved The Powers That Be actually.
Graham: Oh, you know, I think we’ve now had more reunions of The Powers That Be personnel than we did episodes. We’ve remained a pretty close group and I’ll tell you getting together with Norman Lear, who is 90 years old now and working on his memoirs and not sharp as a tack, but sharper than a tack. He is hilarious and still just so focused on what’s going on and interested. That’s one of the great pleasures of the whole thing.
And then, getting to spend time with Peter MacNichol at any point is always a joy in life. And Holland Taylor, too. What a riot.
I look forward to the last season, even though I’m going to cry.
Graham: Well, that will be our goal. Thanks.
And first of all, FX and the folks behind The Bridge for getting the Peabody Award yesterday.
Graham: Oh, fantastic. I hadn’t heard that. That’s wonderful.
Yes, Graham. The Bridge was one of 46 projects, radio TV, that won the Peabody. It will be given out here in New York at the Waldorf on May 19th. Hope to be there for that. Elwood Reid, the co-creator with Meredith Stiehm, was on our show last year and I’m curious what you think about The Bridge getting it?
Graham: Listen, I love Elwood’s work and I think The Bridge is another wonderful show from FX and very deserving of a Peabody. I’ve been lucky enough to, we got one on Justified and there was another one for Boomtown years ago and the thing that validates it the most is to see Stephen Colbert hold up his proudly. And it’s like, okay, then it really does mean something if Colbert is bragging about it.
Graham, sort of a follow-up to an answer you just had a moment ago. When you started Justified FX was one of the few basic cable networks that did original scripted programming and now we have a marketplace where you have so many networks getting into the scripted game. We’ve already had this year Discovery get in, El Rey got in with Rob Rodriguez, WGN America gets in with Salem and Manhattan, which you mentioned earlier, WE gets in and we’re not even counting Netflix, Google, Amazon maybe Microsoft, etc.
What do you make of this marketplace and how did it stimulate you folks to raise the bar in your final season?
Graham: Well, I mean I think it’s fantastic that the marketplace is like this and we’ll see how it shakes out. Because it’s not as though the marketplace has expanded and everyone is doing the same show. It’s not as though there’s five new outlets and they’re all doing zombie shows or vampire shows or gritty cop shows or whatever. People are trying different things, like Manhattan.
My friend, Remi Aubuchon is working with Charlie Huston on Powers that’s going to be on PlayStation. And that’s just a wonderful, wonderful series idea. So, it’s all over the place and it’s really, I think that’s really wonderful. The question is how it will shake out and then the other question is how does that raise the bar for us for the last season?
I think that the pressure has been mounting each year that we’ve done Justified. But we honestly try not to think about that too much. We really just are going to be thinking how can we end this series in the most exciting and heartbreaking and true to what we’ve done before way that we can?
And one more thing, Graham, with Elmore Leonard passing away last year, how is his spirit still being reflected in your scripts and in the show?
Graham: His name comes up every day in the writer’s room and on set. You know, Tim, Walton, the other cast members talk about him and his work all the time. We really do take seriously the notion of what would Elmore do? And we think about it a lot and we refer to his texts almost as if they were scripture, you know. It’s, well, in Tishomingo Blues he did this, and in Gold Coast he did that and, oh boy, City Primeval.
City Primeval was one of his earlier crime fiction books and we look to that for inspiration a lot this season. Our bad guy had that ability, a Daryl Crowe, Jr., like the bad guy in City Primeval to sort of always get out of the good guy’s traps.
Thanks for your time this morning. I really appreciate it. I’ve seen the finale. FX sent a link out the other day and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else who maybe hasn’t on the call yet, so I’m going to try to ask you to talk around it in asking you this question. It seems like the way things end is a more explicit flow from one season to the next than you’ve had in the past.
And I’m curious if you sort of approached, when you decided that you were going to have two more seasons, if you sort of approached those two as one big story as opposed to a discrete sort of season-by-season thing that you’ve done in the past?
Graham: Yes. I mean, you’re absolutely right and very perceptive on that. That’s exactly what we did. Leonard Chang, one of the writers, called it pretty early last July when we were talking about Season 5. We found that we couldn’t help also talking about Season 6 and we knew by that point that that would be our final season.
And we started discussing, well, how do we want this whole thing to end? Where do we want to go? And Leonard said, you know, maybe we should just be thinking about this one big season that’s divided in two parts. That said, you’ve seen the finale.
You know that the Crowe story reaches a conclusion, but the story of Raylan, of Boyd, and of Ava and the office, particularly Rachel and David Vasquez, our U.S. Attorney, that everything, and that would involve Gutterson as well, everything is pointed in a certain direction for next year and that was our goal from pretty early on.
And I don’t know if you’ve started breaking stories or working on Season 6 yet, but do you have a sense of is it going to be sort of a fairly condensed time frame, like you had this season where Raylan sort of gave himself a deadline there at the end?
Graham: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny on our show, we’ve done the math and the whole thing is really taking place over two years, the five years have. And we also figured out at one point that our show, when it started was taking place in the future because we went on the air in 2010. If you do the math, by various dates that have been shown in the show, that it really should have started in 2012.
But, that aside, we do deal with a pretty condensed time frame. We don’t intend to do that. We just find that one story does lead into the next, one episode to the next. So, yes, it will be in that fashion. We imagine that the sixth season will take place over a fairly short period of time, certainly a few weeks, maybe a couple of months.
How much will we see of Art next season?
Graham: We’ll see Art. I’ve tried right from the beginning, since Art was shot in the 11th episode of the season, I’ve tried to not be coy at all. We’re not playing that for suspense. Art lives and he will be a part of things. I will say this, that one of the themes of the final season, as it were, theme might be not exactly the right term for this, but is the notion of one more thing before I go.
And that is certainly the case for Raylan. It’ll also be the case for Boyd and we also think it’ll be a case for Art. In talking to our technical advisor, former Chief Deputy in L.A., Charlie Almanza, he said that it’s not uncommon for a chief deputy before he retires to say, you know, there’s one more case I want to handle, one more guy I want to get. And that will be part of Art’s story.
And will there be, I mean, I’ve seen the final episode, we know what the season arc is going to entail; will be there be little cases of the week or is it really going to be just the through line set out in the final episode of this season?
Graham: You know, it’s really our goal to make it more serialized than we have in the past and to make it more one big story. The marching orders I got at the beginning of this series from John Landgraf at FX was that you can do stand alone episodes in the first half of the first season and start really focusing on the serialized aspect and we’ve done fewer and fewer stand alone episodes as the series has progressed because, in general, we have the audience that we’re going to have and they’re relatively loyal, they’re very loyal and they know the stories.
And so, there was a certain frustration with some of the long-term fans with any stand alone stuff we did this season. And we’ve heard that, but we were already intending to go more serialized in the final season anyway, because that’s what we really have to serve is the stories of Raylan, Boyd, Ava and the Marshall.
So, I wanted to go back to Art for a second. Did you guys ever talk about killing him off?
Graham: Listen, we have a very freewheeling room, so we talk about stuff all the time. And, yeah, that’ll come up. It’ll come up should we kill off Rachel or Tim? Boy, that would really set Raylan on fire. But it just never felt like it was our show. Certainly people die in the show and I think there’s been great heartache and sadness along the way.
But I think that level of heartache is almost, is really kind of outside of our story, or outside of Elmore. Now, that said, we’re heading into the last season. And we still don’t know who is going to live and who is going to die. We don’t know who, if anyone, will leave Harlan alive. And so, everything is on the table. And if we can find a way to make it work or if it gives us something, if it is really a wonderful character story then anything can happen to anyone in the final season.
Okay. Well, I have to say I’m glad you didn’t do it this season, because I don’t think I could have forgiven you guys.
Graham: Well, honestly, I’ve had those experiences in the past with shows and I think you have to be very careful with that.
Kara: Absolutely, so talking about Boyd, I find him such a compelling character and everyone I talk to the show about kind of loves him as well, despite his faults, I’ll say that euphemism. I really find myself rooting for him. Has your opinion or journey for Boyd changed from the beginning of the series?
Graham: It has to a degree. I think that one of the things; I remember this phone call I had with Walton, I remember I was in a car, I remember where I was going and I was calling up and saying, “Walton, we’re thinking that maybe Boyd Crowder should live,” because we were remembering that we killed him when we shot the pilot and then decided to bring him back to life.
And Walton was thrilled. And I remember him talking about other things that Boyd could get involved in. We came up with the idea of him finding religion in that first season. And we like the idea of Boyd getting sort of passionately attached to things.
You know he goes this way, he goes that way. And one of our guiding principles has been something that Elmore said to us when he was watching the episode through the first season, he said about Boyd, “I don’t believe a word he says, but I love to hear him say it.” But our thing is that Boyd believes it.
And Boyd is really, the one anchor he’s had, the one thing he’s had is that he loves Ava. That’s the most important thing in his life. And yet, he makes certain decisions at the end of this season that sort of makes you wonder how important that is. And you’ll see what happens at the end of the season.
If you haven’t watched the episode big questions are asked about Boyd and about Ava and that’s stuff that we want to explore next year. So, I think… and we’ve evolved and our opinion of him has evolved, but there’s also a degree to which Boyd is always going to be Boyd.
Okay. I don’t think I’d have it any other way. And I have seen the finale. I thought it was great.
Graham: Oh, thanks.
So, my final question is about Raylan. Do you think he’ll actually ever make it to Florida?
Graham: Well, I’ve got to say, that’s still up in the air. Tim was saying a friend of his in watching the show had said, “Man, I don’t know if Raylan’s going to live or die,” and Tim kind of rubbed his hands together and said, “Fantastic,” because we still don’t know and we’ll find out.
First question is sort of going forward next year it seems like it’s poised for Boyd to sort of be the “big bad.” On the other hand, as we’ve said before, we love Boyd. So, what’s the difficulty there of sort of, again, having him be the main antagonist, but on the other hand somebody that we root for?
Graham: Well, I mean that’s been part of the DNA of the show, right from the beginning. You know, Boyd has always been the big bad. He’s always been essentially the white whale for Raylan. And I think Raylan has looked the other way because Boyd has served his purposed at times, but I think that as we see toward the end of this season, Raylan’s frustration with that and where Boyd’s life has taken him and brought him to do things that Raylan is just agog at.
And also the effect it’s had on Ava and I think that that’s one of the things we were going for in the penultimate episode. So, it’s not going to be easy. We can’t just, you know, Raylan is not just going to go shoot Boyd in the first episode of the final season. We have to figure a story.
And that’s one of the reasons we brought Mary Steenburgen in, to create and bring in another world and another thing that Boyd can be involved with for the final season.
And a quick follow-up on something else. Loved to see Wood Harris during the course of the year and it seems like he’s part of a sort of larger trend of lots of actors from The Wire getting really nice, meaty parts any number of years after the show stopped and departed. So, talk about, one, Wood, in general, and, in general, the bigger question of why now for these soft of…?
Graham: Okay, my phone just beeped and dropped out when you said why now?
Yeah, why now in terms of actors from The Wire sort of getting this second chance here?
Graham: You know, that’s interesting. I don’t know if there is a why now? I mean, you know as well as anyone that The Wire is esteemed in this sort of hallowed position in the industry, that it is looked at as perhaps, it, The Sopranos, a couple of others along the way, as the highest bar to try to clear.
And so, there’s just always respect for people who have been on it and to get Wood and to get Steve Harris on the show, that was something, that came through Tim. Tim knows them and there was chitchat back and forth, maybe there’s something on the show, would you want to make sure, let’s do it.
And then Dave Andron got to work on the episode where they first appear and then he got to write with Leonard Chang the big episode for them, the 9th episode as well. So, it all just kind of worked out and we try to have that kind of faith on the show that we can find something fun for actors to do.
I just have one question for you. It might seem like kind of a silly one, but fans want to know if you’re thinking about making a movie once this series wraps?
Graham: Again, I won’t be coy. We’ve talked about it, but there’s absolutely nothing concrete. Our focus is just so entirely on trying to put together the final season that we haven’t really thought beyond that. At the same time, we always think about it.
Now, that would lead you to believe that then Raylan must live, but that is something that, again, because we haven’t decided, you know, listen, if he dies then there’s not going to be a movie. Unless it’s about Dewey. And we love our Dewey, but it really hasn’t been decided. But it also is something that we do talk about.
My question is with so much onus on the whole finale thing, you know, we saw it with Breaking Bad, we saw it just the other day with How I Met Your Mother. How much pressure is there to deliver that final moment, that final scene and is that something in the long-term planning you guys have already thought about?
Graham: Yeah, it’s something we’ve thought about almost from the beginning, but it’s something that changes year-by-year. Ideas we had for the ending two years ago don’t really sort of work with what we’re thinking now. But at the same time over this past year I had an idea about, let’s say about a year ago or a little less than a year ago for how the series could end.
And then, kind of we moved on from that into another version. But a couple of weeks ago we all gathered the writers and we went back to the previous one, so we still don’t know what we’re going to do. And you just hope that you come up with something that works. I had the incredible pleasure of sitting at a table with Bob Newhart back in September and I asked him, because the end of Newhart is one of the best endings in the history of television and I said, “Who came up with that?” And he pointed to his wife. It was her idea.
And so, you hope, we just hope that we come up with something that really satisfies people. It’s funny, the ending for The Sopranos disappointed so many people and yet, in retrospect and over the years people have kind of started to nod and say, well, you know what, maybe that was just perfect for that show and those characters.
So, it’s hard to say. We don’t want to do a snow globe like St. Elsewhere, although I was one of the people who actually loved that ending because ultimately what does it matter? The series is over. It doesn’t change all the episodes that came before. You try to come up with something that seems to hold the whole thing together. And, yeah, we’ll see what we do.
Would you say that with this finale episode and then going in that there is, I remember talking to Kurt Sutter with Sons of Anarchy and he said, “You know, I had the idea of the last shot of the show for a while now. How we get there is what I needed to figure out.” How much in the broad story have you guys kind of thought about the story? Is that something in stone right now, or is it something you’re still working on as far as how this final season will go?
Graham: It’s something we’re still working. As I said, I’ve had ideas for the last show as well, but they’ve changed over the years and we’ll see what really works with the story that we come up with for next season. We always have targets, we have goals. Like early on in the first season we said, yeah, let’s get Boyd and Raylan on the same side of the gunfight. And that became our goal and we ended up with “Bulletville.”
With Season 2, once Mags poisoned the guy in the first episode I thought, well, that’s the way this season has to end, with Mags poisoning herself. So, we’ll come up with those targets and then like Kurt says, you just have to figure out how to get there. And at the same time have the flexibility to let the targets change.
We had a goal early on in this season. We wanted to see Boyd and Raylan working together again and they did in the penultimate episode. But, boy, the take away from that was very different than I think what we had first imagined. It became far more acrimonious and fraught than we had first thought.
My last question; you mentioned that there are a lot of questions during, on the Reddit AMA, about guest stars for the final season. You said multiple times it would feel wrong not to bring back characters like Limehouse and different people. Is there an expectation of that for the final season, you now, because, obviously, it’s going to be a different story than what we have right now, but at the same time I’ve got to imagine that the main focus is always going to remain on Raylan and Boyd and how that’s going to conclude.
Graham: Yes, you’re absolutely right. And the danger is that it becomes a farewell tour. So, oh, there’s that guy from Season 2 or there’s that woman from Season 3. And there’s part of me that loves that and wants to do that because I have a sentimental attachment and I think a lot of us on the show do to a lot of these characters, but at the same time, having seen that done in other shows, we know that it doesn’t deliver what you hoped it would deliver and that just boiling it down to the main characters of Raylan, Boyd and Ava and the Marshall, that that’s what the story comes down to.
We were talking a little earlier about it kind of being a golden age of TV and I’m wondering when you’re not busy working what, if anything, do you like to watch?
Graham: You know, I only watch FX shows because that’s part of my deal. No, but I do watch a lot of FX shows. I’m a big fan of the other dramas, but also their comedies. I’ve been watching Sunny for a long time and Archer, I love what Adam Reed did this year with the reboot of that show. A big show for my son, who, at first I was resistant was Game of Thrones because I was a big science fiction fantasy reader back when I was younger, but sort of didn’t want to get back into that again.
But then he said, no, you’ve got to watch the first episode. And once Jaime Lannister tossed Bran out the window, I was in. And so I’m really looking forward to the fourth season of that. My wife and I watched True Detective and really got hooked by that. But I don’t watch everything. The writers room is big enough that between all the writers at least someone is watching, in toto everything gets watched. So, we have a sense of what’s going on out there.
And on FX do you watch The Americans and/or Louie?
Graham: Well, The Americans I’m part of, so I maintain that I have one of the best jobs in television. I get to hear pitches from Joe Weisberg and Joel Field on episodes, I get to read first drafts of scripts and I get to see early cuts. So, that is the coolest thing because I love that show and I’m just so happy to have any relation to it.
Louie, I think that at times Louie is the best thing that’s ever been on television and that will sound hyperbolic, but there have been episodes where I’ve just been laughing and crying in the whole thing and just agog. I do think that looking back people will say, wow, that was maybe the best thing. It’s just such a tremendous show and that’s one of the great reasons to be at FX is the fact that Louis (C.K.) would say, you know, I’m tired I want to take a year off and they kind of shrug and say okay.
What a wonderful place to be that there is that freedom.
Do you think there’s anything of interest on broadcast or could there be?
Graham: I think there could be. Listen, it’s a weird world where there’s only, by the sort the commentariat’s review, there’s one good show on broadcast, which is The Good Wife. Although I’ve heard a lot of really good things about Crisis. I haven’t watched that. That is the kind of show that intrigues me. I like a really, good, smart action adventure thriller.
I’m really looking forward to Season 2 of Orphan Black, by the way. That’s another show I follow. But I think there could be. It’s interesting, I’ve been talking to Noah Wylie about some things and, listen, he was on ER and that was about as good as television gets at times, especially in the first seven, eight, nine, 10 seasons. And that’s a long run. And it went even longer than that.
And the thing was even by the end ER was still really strong. People just got used to it. That was the only problem. And there was a period when ER and West Wing were on at the same time. That was pretty great television. So, I think that networks can do that and find the big, broad appeal shows. It’s just except for Good Wife it hasn’t been done recently.
I have a request. Can you tell your buddy John Landgraf to lock down Natalie Zea, pay her whatever she needs to quit her 50 other TV shows and just play Winona next season?
Graham: You know, it’s so funny. Back in the first season and then for the second season there were camps. There was Team Ava and Team Winona. That was back in the days of the early Twilight movies and all that Second Day crap, but anyway, it’s so funny how it’s evolved because there were times when people were, they always loved Natalie and just thought she was doing a brilliant job, but didn’t enjoy Winona entirely.
And it became truly one of our goals, because we like Winona. We thought Winona was speaking truth to this pretty messed up guy and loved him nonetheless. And so we made it our goal to rehabilitate Winona and really capping it with her and Raylan firing guns in the nursery in the last episode of Season 4.
So, yeah, it’s kind of a story thing, too. We just need to sort of figure out where we’re going and when, if Raylan gets to Florida and what the relationship is going to be. If you have not seen the last episode this season there’s a moment between them, another Skype call that I think sort of indicates at least down deep what their emotional connection is. Yeah, we love Natalie. So, we’ll see.
Well, you know, if you’re thinking about that final image, what about Raylan walking onto South Beach and Winona is there in a tiny bikini and they just embrace and then fade out.
Graham: Really, that’s what it comes down to? There’s the other half of our audience who would want to make sure that Tim was shirtless at that point.
Yeah, you can throw that in, too.
Graham: Yeah, you know, listen this is the thing. And I think one of the realities is this is the question about the last image, the last scene, the last episode is that no matter what we do there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be disappointed. And our hope is that we do something that we think is good and right.
I had breakfast with Damon Lindelof a couple of months ago and I’m one of the people, actually I like the way Lost ended, but then again, I’m someone who really kind of goes with whatever the people doing the show are doing. It’s sort of like, well, I’ve entrusted you with this for a long time and I like what you’re doing, so if you choose to end it this way, then I think that that’s right and good.
That said, I didn’t like the end of Seinfeld.
Okay. And, yeah, on a serious note I think you should just say screw all the Internet haters and the critics. End the show how you want to end it and who cares? It’s your show.
Graham: Honestly, we never sort of say screw them, but we do say, okay, I hear what people are saying. What can we do? We don’t become obsessive about it, we don’t read a lot of stuff. But, for example, I was very concerned about the cigarette pack bomb in the 11th episode. That was my idea, there was a lot of hemming and hawing over that, whether it was ludicrous or wonderful.
And so, one of the other writers, V.J. Boyd texted me while that episode was airing and said, “Twitter likes the cigarette pack bomb.” And I honestly went, whew, fantastic because I really didn’t know how that was going to play. So, we are always like anyone in this business looking for approval. But was also really try to do stuff where we look at each other and go, that was cool.
It must be different in the age of social media to be writing and producing these shows than the work you were doing.
Graham: Oh, it’s completely different. Twenty years ago you didn’t get every episode reviewed. You got a review at the beginning of the season or the beginning of a series and maybe a couple of times from then on and that was about it.
Has that changed at all how you write?
Graham: It’s totally changed and people on our show follow that and say, you know, like I’ve heard this year that our fans are tired of the stand alones. They just want the serialized. So, we pay attention to that.
It’s funny because I actually like the stand alones.
Graham: Well, there you go. And we do, too. And I think that some of our best episodes over the years have been stand alones.
Well, because it was mostly Raylan, for one thing, when you had the stand alone. That’s why I liked it.
Graham: Mostly Raylan. I think that one of the things that we’ve always tried to do is that even if it’s a stand alone it advances something in terms of Raylan’s story or the larger story of the season or it’s something that we’ll bring back in later on and it will have an effect. So, nothing is completely a stand along on this show.
Right. I was going to ask you a question about, I’ve always like the relationship between Raylan and Rachel and I was wondering if you’ve ever thought of going with them as a couple?
Graham: You know, I got asked that on the Reddit AMA and, you know, and the thing that popped into my head was Mary Richards on the Mary Tyler Moore show, the later season that she and Lou Grant go on a date and they actually kiss and then they both break into laughter. Listen, again, we talk about every character dying, we talk about every character kissing Raylan, Raylan kissing them and, yeah, there is fun stuff between Raylan and Rachel and the question becomes is that something that feels right?
What can we get from it? Is it entertaining? Does it feel Elmore? And that’s a big thing. And if it does feel Elmore, because Elmore loves men and women who both get the joke and just really like each other, but we’ll see.
Okay. And you mentioned Crisis, I was wondering do you think that it’s harder on the so-called regular networks to do these shows where the story is so involved you have to watch every week and they hope that everybody is tuning in, but then people don’t and so they sort of get lost? I mean you hope that the show is going to be Lost, but a lot of times people just don’t watch the show and they end up cancelling it. It seems like the old shows where they had, everything was episodic it might have been easier for people to tune in and they didn’t have to worry so much about it.
Graham: You’re absolutely right. I think that sums it up. What could the networks do? How does it work? And one of the things about Lost is that its ratings were so huge in the first season that even though it probably fell off year-by-year, it started from such a high point that even falling off left it with a good chunk of viewers. And that’s harder for other shows starting out. You don’t know if you’re going to get that.
Yeah, it seems to work fine with cable because you don’t have to worry as much about how many viewers you have if you only have 10 episodes a season, five seasons, whatever. But with the networks if they’re not good in three episodes like Crisis, which I like, it seems, okay, it’s cancelled. It’s like, what?
Graham: Right. And that is one of the burdens of being a network. And the trick is finding that balance.
One of the biggest themes in the show right from the get-go has been family and it seems like it’s more than most other cop or crime shows. Raylan has three families. He’s got his dysfunctional original family, he’s got his slightly less dysfunctional surrogate family in the office and then he’s got his former girlfriend and daughter. Then there’s the family Boyd’s tried to make for himself and then we’ve had crime families like Dennis and the Crowes. There’s even a quasi-familial relationship between Raylan and Boyd.
Could you talk to us about…
Graham: One quick second. Sorry about that everyone. So, the family.
Yeah, could you talk to us about the importance of the family to the series and how that has evolved over its run and will continue to evolve through to the finale of the show?
Graham: Yeah, it’s been a big part of the show, obviously, and I think that part of it comes from the region. Listen, I think family is important everywhere in the world and I think that that is one thing to always keep in mind that no region has a particular ownership of that story.
That said, the notion of family and clan is very important in Appalachia. And that’s something that we gravitated to, especially in the second season and the notion of a feud between Raylan’s family and the Bennett family. But then that also sort of brought up the notion of Raylan’s family and Boyd’s family and that there was a bond and a rivalry in that kind of thing.
And then, yes, the notion that Art has been, from the beginning what I’ve mentioned earlier, Raylan’s good father and that his true family, his family of choice; so it’s his family of origin, that he had no choice over, but his family of choice has been the Marshal service. And so that’s the one that we could really see the fractures in and the problems of what it means to be Raylan and what it means to work with someone like Raylan.
So, you nailed it. You picked out all the families in the history of the show and so, yes, that will be a big part of the final season. And I think you see things in these last episodes of this season about Raylan and his Marshall family sort of coming together after the great fracture that happened in the middle of the season.
You changed who sings the song at the end of the season. Why did you do that? What does it signify?
Graham: Well, actually, you want the full history?
Sure.
Graham: Okay. So, at the end of the first season we used Brad Paisley. And then we thought of going off his version at the end of the second season, but went with Brad again, just a shorter version. We didn’t use the song in the third season. And then last year we had Dave Alvin record it. And Dave is a friend of the show. He actually performed in the third season.
And then we always thought if, and this is giving a little bit of a spoiler to anyone who hasn’t seen the last episode, but I think everyone knows that we’re headed with something with Ava and I thought that if we ever ended a season where Ava’s predicament was at the forefront it would be good to have a female version.
And we listened to a bunch and just Ruby Friedman’s version with its percussiveness and the sort opening of it, it’s just kind of ethereal a cappella stuff just seemed absolutely right and we actually wrote that scene and designed that scene to use her version.
I was wondering, one of the side characters that I’ve always been fascinated with is Loretta McCready and she seems like someone who I would actually like to follow after the series is done. I’m always wondering what she’s up to. Can you talk about being able to use her throughout these last couple of seasons and sprinkling her in, you know, any kind of other inspiration that that character is giving?
Graham: It’s obvious from the second season on that we’ve always looked for something to do with Loretta. We just fell in love with the character, but more importantly with Kaitlyn (Dever). She is just an amazing actor. And so, we just always, when we were breaking the season we ask ourselves is there anything for Loretta this season?
And for this season, because one of the issues has been Raylan and parenthood we thought, well, who better than Loretta to sort of shine a light on that? Whether or not we see her next year, we don’t know. But, yeah, I’m really glad you like to think about her and where she’s going and what she’s doing because we love her, too.
So, my follow-up is that being that Justified is a cop show, and there are so many out there, but has there ever been any idea or any story that had to be scrapped because of something that’s been done in another cop show? Has that ever kind of come across your desk?
Graham: We get into things and the writers will say, oh, you know, they did that on Breaking Bad. And that’s what we heard a lot, damn that Breaking Bad, that Vince Gilligan and his team. So, I can’t think of any specifics.
But there were also real concerns at the beginning of this season about Ava in prison in the world of Orange Is The New Black. But we had her in jail and then in prison and there was nothing that we could do about that. And so, we just had to do it anyway and just kind of put blinders on and pretend that the other show didn’t exist.
I’ve always been fascinated with the character of Ava and back when she was introduced in the first season I didn’t realize that she was going to be such an integral part of the series. At what point did you realize that there was more to this character and that she would have this lasting power throughout multiple seasons of the show?
Graham: Listen, we decided very early on that she would be a part of the series. We just loved what Joelle was doing. We thought the character of Ava was really fun and interesting and so, we started off with her as Raylan’s girlfriend. And then we thought, you know what, let’s play with that. Let’s have that break apart and then the question became how does Ava stay a part of the show? And we went for the idea of her linking up with Boyd.
And that then gave her a position for the rest of the series. But a lot of that was just predicated on loving Joelle and just wanting her to be part of the show.
Okay. And is it intentional you keep putting her through so many terrible things? It just seems like every year she’s got, she seems to go through the most I think, like in terms of physical abuse.
Graham: She really does and as much as we love Joelle, we also like to torment her. The whole decision to cut her hair was a big deal to see and we went back and forth on that a lot and she was just such a game player and said, yeah, let’s do it. But the goal of this season was to see Ava on her own and how she would survive. And she does survive.
Well, that’s excellent. Thank you so much.
Graham: You got it. Thanks, everyone.
Photos by Prashant Gupta/Courtesy of FX